Lecture Hartmut Rosa ‘Social Acceleration and the Temporal Dimension of Law’

Within the framework of the expert-conference ‘Temporal Boundaries of Law’, organized by the Centre for Research of Time & Law (VU) and the Paul Scholten Centre for Jurisprudence (UvA), professor Hartmut Rosa will lecture on the topic of ‘Social acceleration and the temporal dimension of law’. Hartmut Rosa works as a social theorist and political scientist at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and the University of Erfurt. Hartmut Rosa is well known for his research on social acceleration, as elaborated  for example inBeschleuniging. Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne (Suhrkamp, 2005) and Alienation and Acceleration. Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality (NSU Press, 2010). In our society, social acceleration appears as a structural phenomenon and almost ‘everything’ is on the fast lane. Indeed, it can be observed that law also struggles to adapt to changing societal conditions and demands by shifting into a higher gear. Exemplary is the call for faster adjudication. Furthermore, institutions such as the rule of law are also confronted with the consequences of social acceleration. Hartmut Rosa will introduce his theory on social acceleration and discuss the (possible) consequences of this development for law.

The lecture will be held on 30th June 2014, at 13.30 in the Agora room 1, Main Building of VU University of Amsterdam (De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam). Attendance is free and registration is not necessary. For more information, please contact  Lyana Francot: L.M.A.Francot@vu.nl or Luigi Corrias:L.D.A.Corrias@vu.nl

Hartmut Rosa: ‘Social Acceleration and the Temporal Dimension of Law’

Modern societies are characterized by the fact that they depend on ‘dynamic stabilization’. This means they need to grow, to accelerate and to innovate in order to reproduce structurally, i.e., in order to preserve the social status quo. As a result, modern societies can be interpreted as ‘acceleration-societies’, which is to say that the speed of life, and the speed of change, increase incessantly. In this scenario, law serves a double-function: On the one hand, it provides for the social stability necessary for long term investment and long term-planning. Without political and legal stability, social acceleration in the sense of technological progress and economic growth would be impossible. On the other hand, law itself needs to adapt to changing conditions, too. Modern law is no longer supposed to be the expression of ‘eternal’ or ‘timeless’ orders, or even to persist over decades or centuries. Instead, law-making, i.e. legislation, has become a permanent task: Law is made anew again and again. Now, interestingly, it seems that law-making itself is speeding-up (Carl Schmitt, in this sense, talks of the ‘motorized legislator’): The decay-rates of legislation are shrinking in most areas of social life. The only alternative for law to keep its functions in a dynamizing social world would be to become more and more formal and ‘empty of contents’ such that changing social content would not require new legislation. Overall, there appears to be a danger that the classic ‘rule of law’ and its institutions progressively become too slow for the high pace of social life, and hence new forms of mediation and legal plurality prop up.